Studying Dreams: Sigmund Freud And Carl Jung

Studying Dreams

Background on Dreams Dreams are universal experience that could bring bad or good memories. A dream has been very controversial during the ancient times. In Ancient times dreams were believed to be the people’s conversation with the Creator. It was also experienced when Angel Gabriel appeared to Joseph in a dream about the coming of the Messiah that Mary (Joseph’s wife) was bearing. Also, Dreams were exclusively for Religious setting during those times. It was when philosophers and physicians treated dreams as part of science. Dreams have different interpretation in the field of Science and Religion. However, despite of all this differences, it has effect in the lives of people with different domination and beliefs.

Thus, a mental activity occurs when a person sleeps. (no author, n.d) The great theorists; Freud and Jung opened the issues about the dreams in science context. It was when Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put interest in the study of dream in nineteenth century that brought controversies to the people’s life. These theorists believed that it has a psychological importance and a hidden meaning on it. (Linden, 2011). The father of psychoanalysis, a great Neurologist, Sigmund Freud, categorized our minds into 3 major parts: The Id, The ego and the superego. The ego is our conscious self, the us that we are aware of. The superego is a consciousness that keeps our Id suppressed. Our Id, which is suppressed, consists of our primal instincts, impulses, desires, unchecked urges, thoughts and ideas and emotions. This can be considered as our nature, our true self. If dreams were outlets for these things, then what we see in our dreams are actually parts of our true self, the Id that we keep locked away. If so, then dreams are the key to unlocking some parts of us we never knew.

Carl Jung like Freud has three main interacting systems; the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Jung’s ego is somewhat different from Freud. Ego for Jung represents the conscious mind where thoughts, memories and emotions were

Dreams is something that is happening during a deep sleep. When a person is sleeping, she undergoes five sleep stages. First is a light sleep where a person is easy to wake it up. Second, the slightly deeper sleep, followed by the three and four stages that characterizes the deeper sleep. Throughout these stages our brain is slowing down into a deep sleep and then the brain activity is converting into a delta waves (brain’s slowest wave) which means a person is now in a deep sleep. With the helped of the discovered REM or the Rapid Eye Movement that characterized the movement of the eyes in which it represents the fifth stage and means that a person is now in her unconscious state. Rapid Eye Movement or commonly known as a REM sleep was first discovered by a Roman Poet named Lucretius. He first discovered it when he was watching his dog sleeping and the dog’s eyes were moving back and forth underneath its closed eyelids. He then concluded that the dog’s mind is chasing a prey. This was the first phenomenon that was documented about the REM observation. During the REM sleep, muscles were almost paralyzed except for the muscles in the eyes where the eye is in speedy movement. REM dreams is where the deep sleep is happening that shows intense and emotional